This is so crazy -- it's like medieval medicine for the tech crowd. Just goes to show that smart people can be completely irrational as well. I wonder how much of this and practices like it come...
This is so crazy -- it's like medieval medicine for the tech crowd. Just goes to show that smart people can be completely irrational as well.
I wonder how much of this and practices like it come from a widening divide between rich and poor -- if you're rich enough, do you begin to think, "Let's try this out-there procedure that probably won't work on the off-chance it's a holy grail, since the cost doesn't matter" ? I feel like that has something to do with it, but all I have is that feeling.
Never forget scientists are just humans that spent a ton of money on a difficult education (the important part here being "just humans"). This doesn't mean they don't suffer from the same...
Just goes to show that smart people can be completely irrational as well.
Never forget scientists are just humans that spent a ton of money on a difficult education (the important part here being "just humans"). This doesn't mean they don't suffer from the same cognitive biases that everyone else has (they might be more aware of them), or that they don't make stupid / willfully ignorant just like everyone else does once in a while.
Example:
I've worked with chemistry PhD's that had deep beliefs in paranormal stuff / healing crystal stuff.
Pretty darn good at what they studied, but wearing a quartz crystal necklace to ward off "harmful" WiFi radiation.
This is such an interesting phenomenon to me. It's just a reminder to embrace the emotional, irrational side, because it drives a lot of our behavior anyway, and I think it drives even more if we...
This is such an interesting phenomenon to me. It's just a reminder to embrace the emotional, irrational side, because it drives a lot of our behavior anyway, and I think it drives even more if we try to ignore it.
Good point -- I do mean embrace as in, accept that we are all fallible people that can't know everything and make bad decisions sometimes, and sometimes act off feelings that do not reflect...
Good point -- I do mean embrace as in, accept that we are all fallible people that can't know everything and make bad decisions sometimes, and sometimes act off feelings that do not reflect reality. Maybe a "pragmatic emotionalism" or something. Magical thinking does not help anyone, I don't think. Well, most of the time.
YES ABSOLUTELY! I am simultaneously appalled, fascinated, and schadenfreude'd at GOOP. It's so ridiculous and I'd love to sit down with Paltrow and ask her if she understands what she's doing. I...
YES ABSOLUTELY! I am simultaneously appalled, fascinated, and schadenfreude'd at GOOP. It's so ridiculous and I'd love to sit down with Paltrow and ask her if she understands what she's doing. I bet she does, but you never know.
Wealthy people are just people with a lot of money. They have the same concerns over their own mortality that others do and the same propensity toward uninformed beliefs. Note that I say...
Wealthy people are just people with a lot of money. They have the same concerns over their own mortality that others do and the same propensity toward uninformed beliefs.
Note that I say "uninformed" here instead of "irrational". They're thinking perfectly rationally, but lack the education to understand why their position is incorrect. They view the human body like a car. What happens when a part (e.g. an organ) goes bad? You replace it. And the older those parts get, the more likely it is that they'll fail. Similarly, they likely view blood as they would oil, where having young blood infused (an "oil change" of sorts) is seen as beneficial to their health. At a surface level, that position makes perfect, rational sense--it simply falls apart under scrutiny.
It's an important distinction that I feel needs to be made.
I somewhat agree with you in the specific case, but I do think people make plenty of irrational decisions as well. Even in this case, I think the fact that at the core of the seemingly-rational...
I somewhat agree with you in the specific case, but I do think people make plenty of irrational decisions as well. Even in this case, I think the fact that at the core of the seemingly-rational thought process you outline lies an emotion, fear, specifically of death. And that's a strong emotion, that I think in the blood-transfusion case, leads people into looking for evidence that they can prevent or put off death by any means necessary, so I don't think it's rational either. I think the belief that young people's blood transfused into one's body can be life-giving is uninformed and irrational.
How did we get to the point of having this headline make sense? Are these conditions even related? It sounds just like Yet Another Cure-All - and cure-alls cure nothing.
How did we get to the point of having this headline make sense?
The agency issued a safety alert on Tuesday about the infusion of plasma from young donors for the prevention of conditions such as aging or memory loss, or for the treatment of such conditions as dementia, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, heart disease or post‐traumatic stress disorder.
Are these conditions even related? It sounds just like Yet Another Cure-All - and cure-alls cure nothing.
From what I understand, the blood transfusions have some evidence (preliminary studies in rodents) for the prevention or treatment of age-related diseases, which is what most of those are (except...
From what I understand, the blood transfusions have some evidence (preliminary studies in rodents) for the prevention or treatment of age-related diseases, which is what most of those are (except PTSD). The recent trend of NAD supplementation is also based on this, except with much more evidence (mechanistic) and less controversy.
Apologies for no academic sources, I don't have access atm.
I can see how Alzheimer, dementia and heart disease could be related (and IANAD, so this "I can see" is probably worthless) - if it also helps things like the immune system and cardiovascular...
I can see how Alzheimer, dementia and heart disease could be related (and IANAD, so this "I can see" is probably worthless) - if it also helps things like the immune system and cardiovascular health - but... multiple sclerosis? And, yes, PTSD looks thrown in there.
"Age-related diseases", even just the subset listed by the article, seems like too broad a category for a single treatment to help with it all.
Not that I'm defending it, but it's plausible that there may be many different treatable diseases by using blood just from the sheer complexity of blood. There's really too much in there to even...
Not that I'm defending it, but it's plausible that there may be many different treatable diseases by using blood just from the sheer complexity of blood. There's really too much in there to even address with science, you would have to look at every single component.
A good example would be stem cells, which you can extract from your own body and treat specific damaged parts. But even with that there is a lot of complexity still because cells are just complex bags of chemicals. For example, neurotrophic factors released by stem cells may be the mechanism behind it's efficacy to treat neurological disorders. This can be extended to any other -trophic factors.
For those seriously interested in developing such therapies, this is the assumed mechanism of action - maintenance cells of the body start losing their ability to maintain.
This was an interesting article about Ambrosia from a couple of months ago: He Hawks Young Blood As A New Miracle Treatment. All That's Missing Is Proof. The whole aspect of getting the blood from...
Wow, I thought the whole Blood Boy thing in Silicon Valley was just a joke, not an actual parody/lampooning. It's kind of sad this requires an FDA warning. How do people leap into such blatantly...
Wow, I thought the whole Blood Boy thing in Silicon Valley was just a joke, not an actual parody/lampooning.
It's kind of sad this requires an FDA warning. How do people leap into such blatantly unconventional medical procedures without taking a bit of time to research them or talk to their doctors? I feel like if I were to do a cursory Google on the subject I'd be quickly dissuaded. Would these people land on all of the obviously BS sites and clickbait articles that most skeptical people naturally skip over?
I could barely read the article, I was so disgusted. How is infusing your aged blood with the plasma of young people going to stop you from growing old? This sounds like some Countess Erzsebet...
I could barely read the article, I was so disgusted. How is infusing your aged blood with the plasma of young people going to stop you from growing old? This sounds like some Countess Erzsebet Bathory level craziness.
Couldn’t have said it better. I quit smoking using a popular cold turkey method (look up Allen Carr if interested) and it really was ground breaking to realize how we, an “intelligent” species,...
Couldn’t have said it better. I quit smoking using a popular cold turkey method (look up Allen Carr if interested) and it really was ground breaking to realize how we, an “intelligent” species, can rationalize just about anything to fit our own biases even if ignoring the truth will kill us. It’s like evolution got to a certain point and said, “Alright we need to nerf the Human Race a bit. Give them healing crystals and anti-vax blogs to help balance things out.”
This is so crazy -- it's like medieval medicine for the tech crowd. Just goes to show that smart people can be completely irrational as well.
I wonder how much of this and practices like it come from a widening divide between rich and poor -- if you're rich enough, do you begin to think, "Let's try this out-there procedure that probably won't work on the off-chance it's a holy grail, since the cost doesn't matter" ? I feel like that has something to do with it, but all I have is that feeling.
Never forget scientists are just humans that spent a ton of money on a difficult education (the important part here being "just humans"). This doesn't mean they don't suffer from the same cognitive biases that everyone else has (they might be more aware of them), or that they don't make stupid / willfully ignorant just like everyone else does once in a while.
Example:
I've worked with chemistry PhD's that had deep beliefs in paranormal stuff / healing crystal stuff.
Pretty darn good at what they studied, but wearing a quartz crystal necklace to ward off "harmful" WiFi radiation.
This is such an interesting phenomenon to me. It's just a reminder to embrace the emotional, irrational side, because it drives a lot of our behavior anyway, and I think it drives even more if we try to ignore it.
Good point -- I do mean embrace as in, accept that we are all fallible people that can't know everything and make bad decisions sometimes, and sometimes act off feelings that do not reflect reality. Maybe a "pragmatic emotionalism" or something. Magical thinking does not help anyone, I don't think. Well, most of the time.
YES ABSOLUTELY! I am simultaneously appalled, fascinated, and schadenfreude'd at GOOP. It's so ridiculous and I'd love to sit down with Paltrow and ask her if she understands what she's doing. I bet she does, but you never know.
Wealthy people are just people with a lot of money. They have the same concerns over their own mortality that others do and the same propensity toward uninformed beliefs.
Note that I say "uninformed" here instead of "irrational". They're thinking perfectly rationally, but lack the education to understand why their position is incorrect. They view the human body like a car. What happens when a part (e.g. an organ) goes bad? You replace it. And the older those parts get, the more likely it is that they'll fail. Similarly, they likely view blood as they would oil, where having young blood infused (an "oil change" of sorts) is seen as beneficial to their health. At a surface level, that position makes perfect, rational sense--it simply falls apart under scrutiny.
It's an important distinction that I feel needs to be made.
I somewhat agree with you in the specific case, but I do think people make plenty of irrational decisions as well. Even in this case, I think the fact that at the core of the seemingly-rational thought process you outline lies an emotion, fear, specifically of death. And that's a strong emotion, that I think in the blood-transfusion case, leads people into looking for evidence that they can prevent or put off death by any means necessary, so I don't think it's rational either. I think the belief that young people's blood transfused into one's body can be life-giving is uninformed and irrational.
How did we get to the point of having this headline make sense?
Are these conditions even related? It sounds just like Yet Another Cure-All - and cure-alls cure nothing.
From what I understand, the blood transfusions have some evidence (preliminary studies in rodents) for the prevention or treatment of age-related diseases, which is what most of those are (except PTSD). The recent trend of NAD supplementation is also based on this, except with much more evidence (mechanistic) and less controversy.
Apologies for no academic sources, I don't have access atm.
I can see how Alzheimer, dementia and heart disease could be related (and IANAD, so this "I can see" is probably worthless) - if it also helps things like the immune system and cardiovascular health - but... multiple sclerosis? And, yes, PTSD looks thrown in there.
"Age-related diseases", even just the subset listed by the article, seems like too broad a category for a single treatment to help with it all.
Not that I'm defending it, but it's plausible that there may be many different treatable diseases by using blood just from the sheer complexity of blood. There's really too much in there to even address with science, you would have to look at every single component.
A good example would be stem cells, which you can extract from your own body and treat specific damaged parts. But even with that there is a lot of complexity still because cells are just complex bags of chemicals. For example, neurotrophic factors released by stem cells may be the mechanism behind it's efficacy to treat neurological disorders. This can be extended to any other -trophic factors.
For those seriously interested in developing such therapies, this is the assumed mechanism of action - maintenance cells of the body start losing their ability to maintain.
This was an interesting article about Ambrosia from a couple of months ago: He Hawks Young Blood As A New Miracle Treatment. All That's Missing Is Proof.
The whole aspect of getting the blood from blood banks (without the donors knowing) especially stood out.
Wow, I thought the whole Blood Boy thing in Silicon Valley was just a joke, not an actual parody/lampooning.
It's kind of sad this requires an FDA warning. How do people leap into such blatantly unconventional medical procedures without taking a bit of time to research them or talk to their doctors? I feel like if I were to do a cursory Google on the subject I'd be quickly dissuaded. Would these people land on all of the obviously BS sites and clickbait articles that most skeptical people naturally skip over?
I could barely read the article, I was so disgusted. How is infusing your aged blood with the plasma of young people going to stop you from growing old? This sounds like some Countess Erzsebet Bathory level craziness.
I'm starting to believe that the primary purpose of intelligence is less a survival thing then to rationalize your beliefs.
Couldn’t have said it better. I quit smoking using a popular cold turkey method (look up Allen Carr if interested) and it really was ground breaking to realize how we, an “intelligent” species, can rationalize just about anything to fit our own biases even if ignoring the truth will kill us. It’s like evolution got to a certain point and said, “Alright we need to nerf the Human Race a bit. Give them healing crystals and anti-vax blogs to help balance things out.”